Ulysses | Penguin Books New Zealand James Joyce Set entirely on one day, 16 June 1904, Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus as they go about their daily business in Dublin. From this starting point, James Joyce constructs a novel of extraordinary imaginative richness and depth. Unique in the history of literature, Ulysses is one of the most important and enjoyable works of the twentieth century. After its first publication in Paris in 1922, Ulysses was published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head in 1936. These editions, as well as the subsequent resettings of 1960 in Great britain and of 1961 in the US, included an increasing number of transmission and printing errors. In 1977 a team of scholars, led by Professor Hans Walter Gabler, began to study manuscript evidence, typescripts and proofs in an attempt to reconstruct Joyce's creative process in order to come up with a more accurate text. This edition uses the revised 1993 text of Gabler's version.

Format & Editions Bloomsday 2016: Real History of James Joyce and Ulysses SHARE James Joyce's most famous novel Ulysses takes place during Ireland's push for a national identity at the turn of 20th century To fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses, June 16 is a “sacred day” known as Bloomsday, a chance to celebrate the book—which traces ad salesman Leopold Bloom’s path on June 16, 1904, in Dublin, the city seen in the photos above—by eating kidneys for breakfast, donning period costumes or simply raising a pint. Why is the book set on June 16, 1904, of all days? Most likely that’s the anniversary of Joyce’s first date with Nora Barnacle , the hotel waitress with whom he would elope and later live in self-imposed exile from Ireland. But that date influences the story in ways that go beyond sentimentality.

Being set in 1904 means that the novel takes place in the lead up to “the revolution that modern Ireland came out of”—the 1916 Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish War—says historian Tim Pat Coogan, author of Ireland in the Twentieth Century. “Politics, economics, and literature were all changed by what was going on in Ireland around 1904,” he says. For one thing, Ulysses is set amidst a reassessment of what it meant to be Irish. At the time—and ever since the Act of Union had abolished Irish Parliament at the beginning of the 19th century—”Irish representation in [the U.K.] Parliament was relatively small and continuously out-voted,” says Coogan. Especially after the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell, a promising advocate of Home Rule in the 1890s, many Irish people turned to culture and literature as expressions of Irish identity. The Irish literary revival led by William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and J.M. Synge exalted folk tales and poetry and the recording of peasants’ stories.

The revival’s leaders believed that they “might not be able to do anything politically in Westminster, but an Irish nation has to have Irish literature,” as James Quin of the James Joyce Centre in Dublin explains. One product of this movement included the 1904 founding of the Abbey Theatre, the national theater of Ireland, while the 1884 establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association came out of a similar spirit. James Joyce's "Ulysses": Why you should read this book | The Economist purchase-rights icon “THERE are two kinds of people. Those that have read "Ulysses" and those that haven't,” my best friend stated plumply one day, dropping the surprisingly compact 783-page paperback on the table with a thud. This was meant in a silly, snobbish kind of way, but he was right. Given the flood of ecstatic imagination between the covers of James Joyce's novel, its more patient readers are marked for life by having read it. Today, June 16th, is Bloomsday, the day in which all of the action of "Ulysses" takes place in the spinning clockwork of Dublin in 1904.

Joyce's devoted fans can be seen celebrating it every year. While Bloomsday events outside of Dublin tend to be nerdy affairs in Edwardian dress, I do recommend a good public reading if you can find one. (I do not, on the other hand, recommend the Bloomsday Irish breakfast of kidneys and gizzards, which is positively Cronenberg-esque.) Perhaps that breakfast is a good metaphor; some people, not happy with saying "Ulysses" is not to their taste, must pronounce it loathsome. It was banned in America until 1934 because of its “pornographic” nature, a comical artefact of the country's prudishness. And its position atop the western canon's modernist heap has made it an all-too-tempting target for critics . I'll never forget one of my old bosses damning "Ulysses" as the phallogocentric truncheon of paternal oppression, whatever that means.

(He felt Gertrude Stein was the real talent.) Just last year, Slate published a humourless piece in which Ron Rosenbaum fulminated about the book's shortcomings, or rather its overcomings: “'Ulysses' is an overwrought, overwritten epic of gratingly obvious, self-congratulatory, show-off erudition that, with its overstuffed symbolism and leaden attempts at humor, is bearable only by terminal graduate students who demand we validate the time they've wasted reading it.” Ouch. This is the kind of wet-blanket misinformation that you will have to ignore if you want to have any fun. And "Ulysses" is fun—maybe the best book you take to the beach this summer. It is true that full-time literature students are in the best position to read "Ulysses": it's our job, with tons of time and a support staff standing by. I had the luxury of a "Ulysses" seminar with ten other undergrads, a professor with a Joyce tattoo on his back, and a pub with Beamish on tap. That's the ideal, but you really don't need all that.

The beer is important, but all you really need is a clean, well-lit room of one's own, a copy of "Ulysses", Don Gifford's "Ulysses Annotated", Harry Blamires's "The New Bloomsday Book" for chapter summaries, Joseph Campbell for some colour commentary, and some spare time. Many readers will recoil: “I have to read three other books to read this one book? Zounds!” Trust me: you'll be glad you did. Joyce is allusive and experimental, and the helping books do indeed help the reader mine for historical and literary meanings that reward often. But even a reader who forgoes annotated help can enjoy Joyce's virtuosity. Few novelists have the ability to make the English language do whatever he wants, to make it do cartwheels and sing arias. Even when Joyce goes down (yet another) digressive rabbit hole, you love being along for the ride. Two counts in Rosenbaum's indictment against "Ulysses" are worth examining in more detail, since they implicate not just that book but all brainy novels period in today's digital zeitgeist.

The first one is pretty easy: the anti-intellectual, knee-jerk reaction to erudition, show-off or otherwise. We're all familiar with the prejudice that horse sense is better than intellect. And it's true that "Ulysses" is a clearinghouse of historical facts, religious and philosophical ephemera, and clever-boots witticisms. "Ulysses" is also a variety show of the sexual and excretory; the denouement is the book's two main characters drunkenly pissing side by side under the “heaventree of stars”, a first I'm sure. The novel is a perfect mix of highbrow and lowbrow, of poetry and patter, the very same flavour we love in our Shakespeare, who also happens to permeate much of "Ulysses". Both Shakespeare and Joyce are industrial-grade humanists who devote every page to the study and celebration of us—smart, dumb, middling, fair, no matter. The second complaint with "Ulysses", or smart books in general, is that they are too long or too dense, or both, and we simply don't have the time to “waste”.

The fear that we are becoming too distracted for big books has consumed the last decade. But what does digital have to do with novels, aside from making them more accessible? Ulysses, more than any novel, was made for the digital age . In the past decade, various projects have already begun to hyperlink the book with nifty annotations and commentary in an entertaining format to make it even easier to enjoy—in bite-sized portions—Joyce's feast of words. Are we really too busy for one of history's great psychological novels? Many of those who scoff at the idea of reading Ulysses will tell you in the next breath of finishing the 4,000-odd pages of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" (ie, the Game of Thrones books), or consuming all four seasons of "Breaking Bad" in a meth-fuelled weekend. Let's not kid ourselves: we have the time. Find some room in your summer reading for "Ulysses" or those other loose, baggy monsters it spawned, like "Gravity's Rainbow" or "Infinite Jest". "Ulysses" is perhaps the most written about book ever after the Bible, which should tell you something.

It's definitely a better read. Sláinte! Read more: We review Gordon Bowker's biography of James Joyce Ulysses: James Joyce: Hardcover: 9780679600114: Powell's Books Hawthorne From Powells.com In July of 1998, the editors of the Modern Library released their picks for the 100 best English language novels of the 20th century. The list ignited a firestorm of controversy. Why did they include so few novels written by women? Why didn't they include more minority writers? Why so few written by living writers? And who's even heard of Zuleika Dobson , anyway? Surprisingly, amidst all this wrangling there was little criticism of the Modern Library's choice for the number one slot, James Joyce 's great Modernist novel, Ulysses. Though initially branded "obscene" and effectively censored for nearly twenty years, Ulysses is today recognized as one of the great intellectual triumphs of the 20th century. It would be difficult to overstate Ulysses's impact.

Joyce's intricate exploration of one day in the life of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom did for literature what Einstein's Theory of Relativity did for physics; it completely revolutionized the form. With Ulysses, Joyce not only perfected "stream of consciousness"  that great Modernist innovation  and created one of the most complex intellectual labyrinths ever devised by a single mind, he also exploded the boundaries of the language like few writers in history. At the dawn of the 21st century, Ulysses is indispensable to the library of any serious reader. This handsome edition follows the complete and unabridged text as corrected and reset in 1961 and includes a letter from Joyce to Bennett Cerf, the publisher of Random House; the complete text of Judge John Woolsey's 1934 decision lifting the ban against Ulysses in the United States; and the original foreword to the book by Morris L. Ernst, who defended Ulysses during the trial. Farley, Powells.com Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century.

It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction. Ulysses was not published in book form until 1922, when another American woman, Sylvia Beach, published it in Paris her Shakespeare & Company. Ulysses was not available legally in any English-speaking country until 1934, when Random House successfully defended Joyce against obscenity charges and published it in the Modern Library. This edition follows the complete and unabridged text as corrected and reset in 1961. Judge John Woolsey's decision lifting the ban against Ulysses is reprinted, along with a letter from Joyce to Bennett Cerf, the publisher of Random House, and the original foreword to the book by Morris L. Ernst, who defended Ulysses during the trial.

Review "Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky....It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence." The New York Times Review "Talk about understanding 'feminine psychology'  I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it." Arnold Bennett Review "To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time." Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation Review "Yet, for all its appalling longueurs, Ulysses is a work of high genius. Its importance seems to me to lie, not so much in its opening new doors to knowledge  unless in setting an example to Anglo-Saxon writers of putting down everything without compunction  or in inventing new literary forms  Joyce's formula is really, as I have indicated, nearly seventy-five years old  as in its once more setting the standard of the novel so high that it need not be ashamed to take its place beside poetry and drama.

Ulysses has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy." Edmund Wilson Jr., The New Republic, 1922 ( read the entire New Republic review ) Synopsis Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Considered the greatest 20th century novel written in English, in this edition Walter Gabler uncovers previously unseen text. It is a disillusioned study of estrangement, paralysis and the disintegration of society. About the Author James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Rathgar, Dublin. He was one of ten children. He was educated at Jesuit schools and at University College, Dublin. A brilliant student of languages, Joyce once wrote an admiring letter in Norwegian to Henrik Ibsen. He went to Paris for a year in 1902, where he discovered the novel Les Lauriers Sont Coupes by Edouard Dujardin, whose stream-of-consciousness technique he later credited with influencing his own work. Following his mother's death, he returned to Ireland for a brief stay, and then left with Nora Barnacle, with whom he spent the rest of his life.

They had two children, George and Lucia Anna, the latter of whom suffered in later years from schizophrenia. (Joyce and Nora were formally married in 1931.) Joyce lived in voluntary exile from Ireland, although Irish life continued to provide the raw material for his writing. In Trieste, he taught English and made the acquaintance of the Italian novelist Italo Svevo. His first book, the poetry collection Chamber Music, appeared in 1907. The publication of the short story collection Dubliners was delayed repeatedly, and eventually the Irish publisher destroyed the proofs for fear of libel action; this prompted Joyce's final visit to Ireland in 1912. The book was eventually published in 1914 and greeted with acclaim by Ezra Pound, whose enthusiastic support helped Joyce establish a literary career. In 1915 Joyce and Nora moved to Zurich, and at the end of World War I they settled in Paris. His only play, Exiles, was published in 1918 and staged in Munich the same year without success.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, an autobiographical novel (developed from the embryonic, posthumously published Stephen Hero) tracing the artistic development of Stephen Dedalus, was published in 1916. By this time Pound and W. B. Yeats had succeeded in obtaining for Joyce some financial support through the Royal Literary Fund, but he continued to be in need of money for most of his life. Joyce began to suffer from serious vision difficulties due to glaucoma; he would eventually be forced to undergo many operations and long periods of near-blindness. Ulysses, the epic reconstruction of the minutiae of a single day in Dublin  June 16, 1904  was serialized in The Little Review starting in 1918, and published in Paris (by the American Sylvia Beach through her bookstore Shakespeare & Company) in 1922, on his fortieth birthday. Due to censorship it remained unavailable in the United States until 1934 and in the United Kingdom until 1936.

Except for a small volume of verse, Pomes Penyeach (1927), Joyce published nothing thereafter except extracts from the enormous work in progress that emerged as Finnegans Wake in 1939. In his later years he was closely associated with the young Samuel Beckett, whom he had met in 1928. After the German invasion of France, Joyce and Nora moved back to Zurich, where he died on January 13, 1941. 0 1 What you NEED to know about James Joyce, Ulysses and Bloomsday | Ireland.com Like our infographic? Download it here. Apologies Mr Joyce, but here goes: In Ulysses, Joyce wrote about Leopold Bloom and his travels through Dublin on 16 June 1904 – aka Bloom’s day. Joyce is said to have chosen this date, as it marks the first time he went out with his wife-to-be Nora Barnacle. Crossing a globe one fine Dublin day Ulysses is, admittedly, a voluminous tome – even for hardy literary fans. Regardless, this book about a single day has managed to traverse the world in its infamy.

James Joyce statue Lisa Simpson referenced Bloomsday while her yellow-hued family visited Ireland; rock band U2 paid homage to Joyce with its song, Breathe, in 2009; and even film director Mel Brooks named a character Leo Bloom in The Producers, while a calendar next to him shows the date as...16 June. A taste of Bloomsday How do you feel about tucking into thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, stuffed roast heart and liver fried with crust? Bloom’s dining choices were definitely not for the faint-hearted. Most 21st-century celebrants prefer a good old-fashioned full Irish breakfast, but the choice is yours. 5 to try: Joycean highlights Catch Robert Gogan’s infectiously comical jaunts through the famous novel at his one-man Strolling Through Ulysses sessions. 'Bizzare Breakfast' on Bloomsday Pop into what Joyce described as that “moral pub” Davy Byrne ’s for an afternoon gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Burgundy (just like Bloom), or head to Glasthule/Sandycove in your period costumes for “Leopold’s Lunch” in Fitzgerald’s pub.

Davy Byrne's pub A very brave man, indeed Since its publication in 1922, professors, academics and scholars have been discussing, analysing and dissecting every syllable of every word in Ulysses. The result? Many consider the book a bit of a challenge. Except, that is, Robert Gogan: his remastered edition of Ulysses introduces modern user-friendly formatting by applying additional punctuation, without changing a single word or syllable of the original text. Take a bow, Mr Gogan! Listen up If you don’t think you can manage the whole 265,000 words of the novel, don’t panic. Brendan Kilty, owner of the James Joyce House on Usher’s Quay, has an alternative way of appreciating the book: listening to it. Download an audiobook version, put on your headphones and let the beauty of the language flow over you as you walk the streets of Dublin where the novel is set. Maybe it’s time you familiarise yourself?

We Recommend Blog - Kenneth Spencer Research Library - KU Libraries Kenneth Spencer Research Library Bloomsday 2013: Buck Mulligan / Oliver Gogarty Edition June 16th, 2013 Each June 16th, fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses celebrate “Bloomsday” in commemoration of the day on which the novel is set. The annual fête (often marked by marathon readings) takes its name from the modernist classic’s central character, Leopold Bloom. Though the novel belongs primarily to Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, or (in the last episode) Molly Bloom, it is another character who graces its famous first sentence: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” First page of the first episode of Ulysses by James Joyce. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922. Call Number: Joyce Y116. Click image to enlarge. Buck Mulligan, the flippant friend of Stephen Dedalus, was in part modeled after a friend from Joyce’s younger days, Oliver St. John Gogarty.

According to Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellmann, the two young men met at the National Library of Ireland when Joyce was approximately twenty. Both had medical aspirations and wrote poetry, though only Gogarty would go on to become a doctor. While Gogarty admired Joyce’s writing, Joyce was less enthusiastic about his new friend’s, which he felt lacked weight and depth. Joyce did, however, appreciate the satire and bawdiness of Gogarty’s more humorous poems, and he incorporated this into Mulligan’s verse in Ulysses. Perhaps somewhat to his chagrin, Joyce found himself in Gogarty’s company in his first book appearance. Both men had poems titled “Two Songs” published in the annual anthology The Venture (1905). By this time, Joyce and Gogarty had already fallen out. Ellmann notes that from the outset the friendship between the two would-be writers was also a rivalry. The character of Buck Mulligan in Ulysses is entertaining in his wit and pleasure-seeking, but he is also depicted as insensitive and disloyal. Which young writer’s poems are more to your taste?: “Two Songs” by James Joyce and “Two Songs” by Oliver St.

John Gogarty from The Venture; An Annual of Art and Literature. London: John Baillie, 1905, p. 92, p. 138. Call Number: Joyce Y243 . Click images to enlarge and read poems. Readers curious to investigate Gogarty through his own words will find plenty to peruse in Spencer’s collections. Gogarty published verse, plays, novels, and memoirs. His book, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street: A Phantasy in Fact (1937), offers depictions of writers he knew, including Joyce, Yeats, and George Moore, as well as the politicians with whom he associated, such as Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins (Gogarty performed the autopsies on both of these men and subsequently served as a Free State senator).

For those eager to delve into Gogarty’s more obscure writings, Spencer Research Library holds a copy of his play Blight the Tragedy of Dublin: An Exposition in 3 Acts (1917), published under the pseudonym “Alpha and Omega.” Even scarcer is Gogarty’s eight-page pamphlet “A Suggested Operation for Turbinal Catarrh” (1921), which provides insight into his work as a doctor. “A Suggested Operation for Turbinal Catarrh” by Oliver St. John Gogarty. Dublin: pr. for the author, 1921. Call Number: C3118 . Click image to enlarge. Since this medical pamphlet is indeed rare (the only other copy recorded in WorldCat is housed at the National Library of Ireland) we’ve scanned it and posted it in its entirety here . So this is what “Buck Mulligan” was up to when he wasn’t composing ribald rhymes! Signature of Oliver St. John Gogarty, taken from a letter to P. S. O’Hegarty, 17 September, 1924. Call Number: MS P215:1a .

Searching for more Bloomsday fun? For a list of Ulysses “firsts,” check out last year’s Bloomsday post . Elspeth Healey Special Collections Librarian Bloomsday 2012 June 15th, 2012 Happy Bloomsday! As fans of James Joyce’s experimental novel will know, Ulysses is set on June 16, 1904. Accordingly, the 16th of June has become an annual occasion for readers around the globe to celebrate Joyce and commemorate (often with marathon public readings) Leopold Bloom’s fictional wanderings through Dublin. In honor of Bloomsday 2012, we’ve posted a few Ulysses-related “firsts” from the Library’s James F. Spoerri Collection of James Joyce (one of our three major Irish Collections ). It consists of over 900 volumes by and about Joyce, including first editions of all of the writer’s works with the exception of five minor items.

Happy Bloomsday: Novels Set in Just One Day | Chicago Public Library Happy Bloomsday: Novels Set in Just One Day June 11, 2014 James Joyce statue in Trieste, Italy. Source: robertotaddeo, Flickr Observed annually on June 16, Bloomsday is celebrated in Dublin and elsewhere to commemorate the writer James Joyce and the characters and events of his famous novel Ulysses , which takes place over only one day, June 16, 1904. Here are other novels set during just one day. On Chesil Beach : The main sequence in this novel takes place over only a few hours on the Dorset Coast, as Florence and Edward dine before their wedding night. This couple, in 1962, have completely different ideas about what will happen, and Ian McEwan skillfully shows how disastrous it can be when thoughts and wishes are not verbalized. BibWidget Cosmopolis : Not only does Don DeLillo's study of a callous billionaire take place over one day, but mostly over one setting, the backseat of a lavish limousine.

As 28-year-old Edward Packer cruises through the city toward a haircut, he gambles on the future of the yen, receives a doctor exam, meets a couple of sexual partners and witnesses various traffic jams due to civil unrest. The monotonous nature of the novel signifies the end of an era where the privileged elite could seal themselves inside bubbles, as the nature of reality keeps interfering. BibWidget Mrs. Dalloway : Virginia Woolf weaves a complex narrative thread that connects troubled housewife Clarissa Dalloway to the inner lives of the characters she encounters as she prepares for a party. While figures as diverse as a past love and a shell-shocked veteran inspire Clarissa to ponder roads not taken, this novel, with its rich inner life, is perhaps closest in spirit to Joyce's masterpiece. BibWidget 400 S.

State Street Chicago, IL 60605 (312) 747-4300 7 Notable Works by James Joyce You Should Know 7 Notable Works by James Joyce You Should Know Ciaran Lawler Updated: 28 September 2016 James Joyce is widely considered to be one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century, and of Ireland. Known for reworking myth into contemporary narratives, as well as incorporating the character of the city into his works, Joyce was one of the key players of Modernism, whose works came to define the movement. In this list we will take a look at some of the major works, in chronological order, produced by this Dublin native. Courtesy of Penguin Dubliners (1914) Dubliners was Joyce’s first publication of prose and the only collection of his short stories published during his lifetime. These fifteen stories depict the Irish middle class at the height of the Home Rule period when the island was wrestling with its identity under British rule.

Many of the issues snapshot faced by the characters in this collection snapshot the concerns of many early 20th-century Irish: class, Catholicism, nationalism, modernity vs tradition, and infidelity. It’s longest work, the novella The Dead, concerns a university professor who attends an annual party and dinner with his wife. Here he learns that his wife had been in love with a young boy named Michael Furey who had died tragically many years ago. The professor soon begins to realise that he had never, and would never, be as close to his wife as she had been to the dead young man. A short yet powerful tale, The Dead draws parallels between the loss of life and the loss of love, using the desolate backdrop of an Irish winter to emphasize the desolation of the characters. The story was later adapted into an acclaimed film by the legendary director John Huston. Courtesy of Penguin A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) The first full length novel written by Joyce, this highly acclaimed work allows the reader to delve into the mind of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s literary alter ego.

Dedalus undergoes an intellectual awakening, prompting him to defy conservative conventions held by both the Catholic Church and Irish society as a whole, eventually culminating in his departure from the island and subsequent settling in mainland Europe , mirroring the direction of Joyce’s own life. ‘ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ‘ is also indicative of Joyce’s developing Modernist style, with minimal dialogue and marked use of free indirect speech revealing the inner psychology of the protagonist. A centennial edition, with an introduction by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard was published in 2016 by Penguin. Design by Alvin Lustig courtesy of New Directions Exiles (1918) Joyce’s only play was inspired by his novella The Dead. Concerning a much similar love triangle between a writer named Richard Rowan, his common law wife Bertha, and Rowan’s good friend Robert Hand. This tripartite relationship is complicatedly intersected by a second love triangle the two men and Hand’s cousin. The story contains many autobiographical elements in Joyce’s own life, including Rowan’s complicated relationships with his expatriate friends in Italy and his disdain for Dublin.

Exiles is often considered Joyce’s worst publication, and was rejected for performance by one of Joyce’s biggest champions W.B. Yeats. It’s world premiere was staged entirely in German in 1919, with the English-language premiere happening in New York, for a moderately successful run in 1925. It was shut down after a very short run in London the following year, and wouldn’t again see the stage lights in that city until Harold Pinter directed a version in 1970. Design by Peter Mendelsund courtesy of Random House Ulysses (1922) A book which almost requires no introduction, Ulysses has long been regarded as one of the key works of Modernist literature and one of the greatest novels ever written. Set over the course of one day, the 16 June 1904, the reader follows a day in the life of Leopold Bloom and experiences the various encounters he has with some of Dublin’s other inhabitants. By modelling Ulysses on Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce creates a sense of the epic, and transforms Bloom’s journey through contemporary, mundane Dublin into one of mythic proportions.

While nobody would describe Ulysses as an easy book to read, or even comprehend, many people from all over the world are drawn to its complexities, subtlety and unique stream-of-consciousness structure. Bloomsday, an international celebration of the life and works of James Joyce, is held every 16 June, during which many of the novel’s moments are relived on the streets of modern Dublin. Courtesy of Faber and Faber Pomes Penyeach (1927) Although Joyce has always been much better known for his prose, this small collection of 13 poems gives us another perspective on the man and his work. Pomes Penyeach was written in the decades between 1904 and 1924, and features some of Joyce’s most famous poems, like ‘ On the Beach at Fontana ‘ and ‘ A Flower Given to My Daughter ‘. While many of Joyce’s works are considered quintessentially Irish, this collection reflects his international life, with numerous place names throughout Europe being mentioned, lending the collection a cosmopolitan, exploratory feel. The collection’s brevity and relative simplicity also serve as a good introduction to Joyce for newcomers.

Courtesy of Penguin Finnegans Wake (1939) Joyce wrote this immense, and extraordinarily difficult to comprehend, novel in Paris over the course of 17 years. It was eventually published in 1939, two years before the author’s death, and it has since been viewed as perhaps the most challenging work ever written in the English language. Academics have analysed the text and debated its meaning for decades, to such an extent that it is considered unlikely that anyone would derive much enjoyment from the text. However, by simply reading a few sentences one can gain a glimpse into an exceptional mind working without any restrictions or concern for what people would think, redefining the rules of literature and of language through its bold, experimental style. This alone makes Finnegans Wake a triumph. Courtesy of Companhia Das Letres Finn’s Hotel, (1923 / 2013) This collection of short narrative pieces was only discovered after Joyce’s death, and the road to it’s eventual publication by the Ithys Press, a small arts publication house, is somewhat of a triumph.

As the publisher states: Finn’s Hotel comprises ten beautifully written ‘epiclets’, as Joyce himself called them: ten ‘little epics’ centering on epoch-making Irish historic / mythic moments, spanning some 1,500 years, and pivoting on the year 1132 AD. Many characters included here later reappear, in various guises, in Finnegans Wake. Before you head off to buy a copy, it’s good to keep in mind that the Ithys Press publication, currently the only edition available in English, will run you a few hundred dollars. 'DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN': Exploring Ireland's capital through Joyce's modernist masterpiece | Article | The United States Army 'DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN': Exploring Ireland's capital through Joyce's modernist masterpiece By Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)June 19, 2013 Share via Email 1 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Paul O'Hanrahan of the Balloonatics Theatre Company performs readings from James Joyce's Ulysses during Bloomsday, June 16, 2013.

O'Hanrahan is dressed as the central character of the novel, Leopold Bloom, who lives the breadth of human experience in a single day, June 16, 1904. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 2 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Martello Tower, right of center, rises over Dublin Bay in Ireland. The tower is where the first chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place June 16, 1904. The fort has been converted to a museum dedicated to James Joyce who lived in the tower for a short time. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 3 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – At Martello Tower, now a museum dedicated to James Joyce, author of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, is Joyce's death mask. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 4 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – St.

Andrew's Church is one of the many locations the fictional Leopold Bloom visits during his journey through Dublin in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 5 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – During the action of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, the central character Leopold Bloom visits a chemist called Sweny's to purchase a bar of lemon-scented soap. During Bloomsday in Dublin, celebrated June 16 in honor of the novel, tourists visit the shop to buy souvenirs related to the novel and its author. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 6 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Where once was a confectioner's shop on O'Connell Street in Dublin is now a chain retailer. The location, which was made famous by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses, still retains the sign indicating what had been there when the novel took place in 1904. (Photo Credit: Mr.

Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 7 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – A crowd gathers outside Davy Byrne's pub in Dublin June 16 in celebration of Bloomsday, a holiday that celebrates the novel Ulysses by James Joyce. The novel takes place over the course of 21 hours and follows Leopold Bloom throughout Dublin, including a stop to this very real public house. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 8 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – The reading room at the National Library of Ireland is where the "Scylla and Charybdis" chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place. On Bloomsday, a holiday that celebrates the novel, June 16, 2013, an Internet-streamed reading of the novel took place. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 9 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – A statue of James Joyce stands at the intersection of Talbot and O'Connell streets on the north side of Dublin.

Dublin was home to many famous authors, including Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and George Bernard Shaw. Joyce brought Dublin fame during the modernist literary movement with novels and short stories that took place in the city. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 10 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – A bust of Greek poet Homer overlooks the library at Trinity College in Dublin. The library, which houses the Book of Kells is one of the highlights on a trip to Dublin. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL 11 / 11 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Along the strand at Sandymount, a satellite town of Dublin on the bay, there is a wall with a line from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, an author who wrote extensively about the city. (Photo Credit: Mr. Bryan Gatchell (IMCOM)) VIEW ORIGINAL DUBLIN (June 19, 2013) -- More than 109 years ago, Dubliner James Joyce took Galway-born chambermaid Nora Barnacle on a first date.

It was June 16, 1904. The two eloped and left Ireland. Joyce, a singer, poet, playwright, short story writer and novelist, immortalized the 16th of June, 1904, in what is arguably the pinnacle of the modernist literary movement, the novel Ulysses. The entire book takes place between 8 a.m. June 16, 1904, and twilight in the small hours of June 17. The date is known now as "Bloomsday" in honor of the protagonist of the novel, Leopold Bloom, a middle-age man of Hungarian Jewish descent. The novel mimics and parodies the episodes of Homer's epic The Odyssey as Bloom wanders the streets of Dublin during an ordinary Thursday.

Bloom fixes his unfaithful wife breakfast, uses the privy, receives a love letter, attends a Catholic mass, attends a funeral, attempts to submit an ad to a paper, eats, avoids facing his wife's lover in the streets, listens to music, gets into an argument with a Fenian anti-Semite, leers at a woman on the beach, drinks after visiting a maternity hospital, visits the red light district, and takes a fatherly interest in the other main character of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, whose path Bloom crosses several times throughout the day and whom Joyce modeled on himself. Every June 16, enthusiasts of the novel pop up throughout the city dressed in period costume to walk the paths of the protagonists. Bloom's path bounces from one side of the Liffey, the river that divides Dublin into north and south sides, to the other. Groups perform readings of the novel and act out scenes from the novel at the places they occurred. Hundreds flock to Davy Byrne's Pub, a still extant pub where Bloom eats a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and drinks burgundy.

Many visit the James Joyce Centre on the north side of town, where they can see and knock on the door of 7 Eccles Street, where Bloom's home was. Many stroll Sandymount Strand as Stephen Dedalus does in one of the opening chapters of the book. Following the novel provides a fascinating tour of the city that will take visitors most places therein. Likewise touring the city will elucidate the novel in exciting new ways. The first three chapters follow Dedalus who lives on the south side of the bay. These towns, Sandycove, Dalkey and Sandymount have a resort town feel to them and form a stark contrast to the Bloom chapters of the novel, which take place in Dublin proper. Though Dublin's streets are no longer "paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits," as one character in the novel puts it, there is some poverty and urban blight where much of the novel takes place. Other places have changed significantly since the beginning of the 20th century. There is still a maternity hospital at the location Bloom visits, but only a plaque indicates its Joycean significance. The hospital is soon to relocate for the sake of gaining more modern facilities.

Bloom's home is no longer there. Not all the changes are necessarily negative; the tenements that formed the red light district in Joyce's day have been long since torn down to be replaced by reputable businesses. The James Joyce Centre, located on North Great George's Street, has several portable guides that show where the characters were in the city throughout the novel. One guide maps out one chapter exclusively and follows Bloom from O'Connell Street, a prominent tourist destination in the city, to Duke Street, another prominent tourist destination. Several plaques in the sidewalk show the text that mentions the locations. Getting around Dublin to the sites is fairly simple. Most events in the novel occur within easy walking distance of all other events, with the exception of the opening three chapters and two other chapters. The city's DART commuter rail rides out to the bayside villages in the first part of the book and a one-day return ticket costs 5 euros. Getting to Dublin is slightly more complicated, but not too much so. There are direct flights from München and Stuttgart.

Once at Dublin Airport, there is available a multi-day package bus pass that allows users to get to and from the airport as well as the public bus line and one of the buses that travels a route around Dublin to various tourist destinations. Although the fervor of Joycean tourism settles after June 16, there are still a number of excellent things to do around Dublin. Popular attractions include Phoenix Park, where several Gaelic sports are played, the Guinness Store House and Trinity College, where the Book of Kells, an intricately illuminated book containing the four gospels, is housed. To learn more about Dublin, visit To learn more about Joyce and the James Joyce Centre, visit To read Ulysses in its entirety as an ebook, visit To read most of Joyce's other works, visit RELATED LINKS

Question: The James Joyce novel Ulysses is set on one day in Dublin in 1904 in which month
Answer: June